Lee's elevation is a key part of a 150-year-old propaganda campaign designed to erase slavery as the cause of the war and whitewash the Confederate cause as a noble one. That ideology is known as the Lost Cause, and as historian David Blight writes, it provided a "foundation on which Southerners built the Jim Crow system."

I've been wondering about why Lee was considered such a hero for a long time now. But especially recently, since my mom now thinks that her family might be related to him (we do have direct ties to other high-ranking Confederates).